1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to recording of live events and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for reconstructing a communication session.
2. Description of the Related Art
People communicate with each other in many ways. Although some communication takes place in face-to-face meetings, more frequently people may communicate with each other over a network. For example, a network may carry written communication such as email and text messages, and also may carry audio communication such as a telephone or video telephone call. Most audio/video communication takes place live, which means that as people talk the audio produced is directly conveyed to the other participants. Many ways have been developed for people to speak with each other digitally over a communication network.
It often would be advantageous to record live communication sessions, such as telephone calls, video telephone calls, telephone conferences, etc. However, many states have laws against recording such telephone calls without consent. Thus, if a person would like to record a telephone conversation, the person may be required to notify the other person that the conversation is being recorded and receive their explicit consent to the recording. This process may be awkward, particularly where people are joining and leaving the telephone call over time. Additionally, obtaining consent to have a communication session recorded may alter people's behavior on the communication session and make the communication session less productive, since the people may not feel comfortable being candid about particular issues if they know that the communication session is being recorded. Thus the fact that the communication session is being recorded may negatively affect the productivity of the conversation by inhibiting people from speaking freely.
If the communication session is not recorded, people will need to plan ahead to enable the substance of the communication session to be documented. For example, one person may be designated to take notes during the meeting and preserve a record of the substance of the meeting. The person that takes the notes, or someone working with that person, will then write formal minutes of the meeting. This process may be time consuming for the person tasked with keeping notes, and the quality of the end product is largely dependent on the note taking skill of the person assigned the note-taking task. Additionally, in many instances, no one is assigned the task of keeping notes. In these situations, the only thing that remains after the telephone conversation has ended is the recollection of the people involved. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to record the communication sessions such as telephone and video teleconference based communication sessions without obtaining a-priori consent from the participants.